One exciting adjunct to the Lama Yeshe Biography Project, which I have now completed four years’ work on, is the photo archive. I have five fat albums of prints, sheets of transparencies and two steel boxes of negatives of Lama Yeshe. Sometimes I sit down with people and take them through the albums – it’s too hard to do the slides and negs at this stage. The earliest photo I have of Lama is taken at Villa Altomont, Darjeeling, the house of Zina Rachevsky rented when she left Greece in 1965 or 66 – I’m not one hundred percent sure yet. Rinpoche is with Lama of course though there are earlier photos of Rinpoche, including the one as a child in Phagri printed recently in Mandala. Lama stands with Zina and her boyfriend Nikolaus and Rinpoche – Zina in caftan with platinum hair flowing, Lama holding her baby daughter. Lama looks young and healthy – he was just 30. Rinpoche looks very frail from his TB – many people thought he was about 12, but he was 20.

By 1969 when they arrived at Kopan, Lama was already wearing funky robes – Zina used to love to buy him polyester roll neck skivvies, which he wore happily as donkas. Surely this caused much comment among the traditional Tibetan population, but Lama Yeshe showed very early that while he respected tradition for the right reasons, he was no slave to its whims and social pressures. “I’m a New York Lama!” he would say, way back then.

There is a wonderful photo of Lama on the roof of Kopan’s new dining room and kitchen in 1974, arms akimbo, robes tucked up – the construction boss surrounded by coolies, on the case, missing nothing.

Lama had a great eye for a camera – well probably more for the person holding it. In group shots his face is always turned right to the lens, absolutely plugged in. However, recently I was asked to find a photo of Lama looking serious for one center’s publicity. But a thorough search revealed that Lama did not sit for photos like that–the only one being his formal Vajrasattva pose, which has been published as a card. Everywhere else, Lama either has incorrect robes, is popping his eyes, roaring with laughter, mugging or badly lit. Like Inspector Gadget, Lama was always on duty.

One of my favorite shots is of Lama in a white singlet seated at a little table for lunch, the meal in front of him, sauce bottle at the ready, fork in hand, a simple working man having his lunch. It may have been taken in Hong Kong. Another is of Lama trying on cowboy hats in Reno. There is also a wonderful shot of Lama stopping in mid stride to berate a class of monks at Kopan for some misdemeanor. Every time I see a photo I haven’t seen before, it’s like finding out something new.

As the years pass Lama becomes fatter and puffier as his heart condition takes its toll. While touring he often favored a red zip-up jacket rather than a zen, and his favorite zen was anything but correct: it was fringed and the color was fuchsia, there was nothing maroon about it at all. It made Lama easy to pick out in photos – but not during His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s tour of FPMT and other centers in Europe in 1982, because although he did wear that zen, there are almost no photos of Lama from that time. Tour photographer T. Yeshe says he “just disappeared” when the cameras were out. Lama gave that zen to a Spanish man in Madrid on his last visit to Spain. I don’t know who gave it to Lama, but someone must have.

Another favorite is of his favorite outfit of 1983, a red caftan with white embroidery he picked up while in Egypt on holiday with Sister Max. (There is a big shot of Lama riding a camel.) In California Lama teamed a big brown leather belt and a blue denim Mao cap and sunglasses with this red dress. I spoke to the real estate agent who handled the purchase of Lama’s house near Santa Cruz: “He was with this old hippie wearing God knows what [Åge Delbanco] and here was this guy in the belted red dress and the hat and I thought: ‘Uh oh. Do I really want these people as clients?’ And then he smiled.”

The last photo of Lama is of his holy body in its cheap grey coffin, with Rinpoche at his head, his hand raised in blessing and his hair longer than anyone had ever seen because he hadn’t had time to cut it during his months of continuous care of Lama.

The first photo I have of Lama Osel is of him sitting on the throne with Rinpoche in the white dome at O.Sel.Ling. Australian monk Peter Nelson is with them and Rinpoche had asked him: “Do you know this baby?” and called him “Yeshay, Yeshay.”